Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Girl power

Note: I know that 4.0.1 is on in the US, but here in Europe the servers are currently down, patch is being downloaded, so I can't talk about 4.0.1 business, of course a series is coming up.

There is a pretty strange thing in the guild: large amount of females. Of course I'm aware that women play too and everywhere I went I found some, but The PuG has a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that more than 1/3 of the membership were female.

Now it's a surprise. I mean, the guild was created as an experiment to show that asocial behavior with peers support good performance. Well, all studies agree that women place "emotional values" higher than men, talk about emotions more, much more likely to stay home with their kids, cry and laugh more. Of course there are exceptions, but on the big average, women are more social than men. One would obviously assume that women will stay away from a self-proclaimed asocial guild (again, there are exceptions but not in 1/3 amount).

My first idea was that "asocial women" are outcasts. The social norms expect a man to be tough (boys don't cry), while it expect a woman to be loving an caring. So while a not completely but pretty much asocial man can be socially accepted as "lone wolf" type, a woman with the same attitude would be rejected as "heartless bitch". These women find no place in normal guilds as both the fellow men and women would expect them to be "nice", while such men can be content in normal guilds.

I was satisfied by this explanation and did not care much for long, until it hit me: I officially don't even know that they are women! They didn't stand up and say "Hi, I'm Helen and I'm a girl". The only reason I know they are women is that my girlfriend chats with them. She chats a lot on /casual (dedicated chit-chat channel) and also in /w. Since her English is not the best she often asks what this and that word means. From these words I can figure out that they are chatting about something IRL. Well, an asocial woman who finally found her safe haven from socials won't chat an hour with my GF about dogs or education systems or cultural differences. These women looked pretty social to me. Then why did they swarm my asocial guild?

The culture of gaming is pretty hostile with women, swarm of blogposts discuss this topic. The gaming community has high concentration of immature males who have no meaningful relationship with women and most probably don't want/cannot have one. They just want women as sex tools. Women are often dwarfed by M&S simply because they are women. Their opinion is dismissed, they are called bitches, cunts, and reminded that they should be giving oral pleasure instead of arguments. Remember that a social is only supportive with the in-group members (us) and hostile towards different people (them). The caring, loving, helping socials treat "them" much worse than a selfish anti-social.

These women came to this asocial guild because the social ones rejected them simply for having XX chromosome. An asocial meritocracy is the best place for "outcasts", people rejected by socials just for being different. That's why I'm sure that globalization will finally kill sociality: socials reject different people, but soon no group will be majority anywhere. Social groups cannot function in such environment, asocials can.

Note to trolls who'd say: "you just formed another social group that reject those you wrongfully label M&S". M&S is not a "what are you" group like black, jew, woman or homosexual. M&S is a "what do you do to me" group: people who refuse to perform but still feel entitled for rewards and want me to carry them. They can change their actions any time. Also, the existence of M&S requires hosts they can leech from, while minority groups could/can function on their own.------------------

34 comments:

"There is a pretty strange thing in the guild: large amount of females."

Or is it? From my experience, it's simply a part of the general trend. Guilds of all kinds - whether social or asocial, casual or hardcore, PvE-focused or PvP-focused - tend to have a higher female representation than, say, 5 years ago.

I'm just wondering, have those people that your GF chats with, specifically stated in the casual channel or in /w that they are female? Dogs, education and cultural differences are easily unisex topics for conversations.

Still, it would not really surprise me if there were a lot of women in a guild like yours, since there is less pressure to conform to the other guildmembers' needs (like always showing up for raids, even when you don't feel like it, or to give free boosts). I have often heard girls claim that they are labelled as "boring", "stand-offish", or even "bitches" for not wanting to do something for a guild member (and I believe it), so an asocial guild would probably be a relief for many of them.

I do not think that the popularity of the PuG with women is solely explained by the rude or dismissive behaviour of M&S towards women. I rather think it is more because of the opposite: too much interest and attention from male players.

Women are a minority in WoW and the target audience consists mainly of young men in their "hormonic" age. So naturally as soon as a player exposes herself as a girl, she will receive more male attention than she could wish for.I even have experienced this many times myself, because some desperate players already assume you are a girl, because your avatar is female.

An asocial guild therefore is a haven for girls, because there they are valued for how they play, instead of who they are.

Do you blame them? Immature kids playing World of Warcraft doing bad attempts at "mocking" them or trying to put themselves up the "cool-rank"?

A female asked me in my gchat (I /gquit afterwards, and now they hit sindragosa enrage timer, cool eh?)what my weight was, and I replied. I'm fucking huge. I work out 5 days a week, I've been doing serious working out for 7 years soon. Medicaments included.

point is: Kid bashed me. I replied with a fucking TLDR text, and the kid went like: LOL STFU I DRINK MILK EVERYDAY IM FIT LOL NOOB.I made one of the officers to force him to upload an image of himself in the guildgallery.I don't care if he had his "ideal weight vs. height". It's a load of bullcrap. He was fat as fuck. Honestly. Fucking ugliest brat I've ever seen. and yes, he was one of those "LOL STFU suck my cock bitch" on ventrilo.

I guess they're also in your guild because they can raid and no one has to know they're female.In most other guilds they have to talk on VT/TS/etc to participate in raids, which means everyone would know they're female.

"That's why I'm sure that globalization will finally kill sociality: socials reject different people, but soon no group will be majority anywhere. Social groups cannot function in such environment, asocials can."

I respectfully disagree.

Sociality is hard-coded. It is for a good reason: No human being can survive alone, except perhaps a male in its prime, and he will only survive. Division of labor is a necessity of life for humans. So you have to form groups. And you can't always choose who will be a part of that group. We are not born from nothing; we have parents, some us have/will have kids. You don't choose them. You should be responsible of them. They are of you.If you are making the hypothesis that those links will be broken by globalization, it may be true; but they will be replaced (they are replaced?) by the State or worse a fully deconnected administration. You are living in the EU, right? Yeah!...I am too...It is so much better...

And "socials reject different people": Everybody reject and will reject different people. You are doing it with The PUG (and good for you). Rejecting is choosing. We don't all want the same things.

"Social groups cannot function in such environment, asocials can." Socials will gang up and slaughter asocials. As it always have been.

Number*organization>lone wolf. Number is given by M&S, organization by those intelligent guys and girls who are sufficiently social for using those M&S.

If I may give you an advice, read The Prince. Or re-read it if you have forgotten.

Now I don't really think globalization will ever get to a point where no group is majority anywhere, but for the sake of discussion, I'll concede that.

Still, socials do not need to be the majority to function. Take jews for example. Before establishing Israel they were never really a majority anywhere, and yet in many areas they were the strongest social group.

Also, there is a myriad of various social circles that are small by design. Their social ties are only strengthened by being in minority. The smaller a social group the tighter they will bind.

And even if all nationalities, sexual preferences, genders and whatnot were not of issue, people would still form groups (various unions, fraternities, clubs) based on whatever defining characteristic they could think of. "The club of blue jeans" always despising their sworn enemies "The brotherhood of black jeans" and "The league of khaki pants"

"We" will always help our own and always hate "them","them" and "those guys" even if no one has majority.

I agree with Ephemeron - there's a lot more girls in WoW nowadays than a few years ago. In my current guild half of leadership is female, sometimes our raid team was 4/10 female (although recently most of the girls went on hiatus until Cata), in my girlfriends previous guild all the raid leaders were girls - something I don't recall I've ever seen during BC. Perhaps it's because more and more players get their girlfriends into WoW and they tend to stay even if their relationship falls apart? Or MMO's are much more accepted - there have to be dozens of millions of people who played WoW.

I believe I heard a bit different statistics on men and women as socials. Basically, it states that while women are more social in their expressions, in their actions that matter they behave more rationally than men.

Most women/girls who play WoW, just want to play WoW. They don't necessarily want to be identified by their gender (and that counts for a lot of other areas outside WoW as well).

A guild that outright discriminates against women would be a tough place to be in: you'd have to have very thick skin. I can imagine some women putting up with this if the goal outweighs the disadvantage for them (e.g. progression raiding).

A guild that makes a big deal of its female member(s) also isn't very attractive (sure, there are some women who want to be 'guild princess', but as I said, most women just want to play the game, they don't want to be 'special').

Personally I am in what you might term a 'social guild'. But it is also a guild that doesn't tolerate lolspeak, textspeak or the like. It has other rules that some people might find restrictive. But I think it's exactly those rules of both the guild I am in and those of The PuG that make them attractive guilds to be in. Both for females but also for anyone else who just wants to enjoy the game in a relatively mature setting.

I notice your 'moron of the day' correlates heavily with the changes to talent trees they are doing for Cataclysm. Basically they are tending toward making less opportunities for obvious mistakes in talent choices. Even within each tree most talents are either obvious picks for a pve build or obvious picks for a pvp build. Without looking too thoroughly, I get the impression there will be little room for error - perhaps translating into less people being called morons?

There goes one of the easiest ways of telling good people to pug raids with...

Gevlon: "That's why I'm sure that globalization will finally kill sociality: socials reject different people, but soon no group will be majority anywhere. Social groups cannot function in such environment, asocials can."

How do you come to that conclusion? WoW social guilds reject different people, no group is a majority anywhere, but they continue to function. In real life, a dominant social group will generally appear (eg, Christians, or Anglo-Saxon people). I don't see your evidence.

I am a woman and honestly I would rather be in a good social guild than in a guild like the pug. However a good social guild is extremely difficult to find, and I would choose something like pug ten times over a bad social guild.

I would also like to consider that perhaps a smaller amount of all women play than of all men. Sure, the numbers are much higher now, but generally it is still much more accepted for a man to be a gamer than a woman. So perhaps the subsection of women playing has certain qualities making them more likely to gravitate towards a guild like the pug.

"I have often heard girls claim that they are labelled as "boring", "stand-offish", or even "bitches" for not wanting to do something for a guild member (and I believe it), so an asocial guild would probably be a relief for many of them."

That's one of the reasons I left my guild. That, and being yelled at on voicechat. And recieving inappropriate whispers from guild members.

For now, I am playing a lonerwolf with absolutely no wish to join a "social" guild.

First, not all people play video games, so generalizations of how man are not social and how women are social, do not necessary apply. It maybe that social men and non-social women are attracted to gaming. However I don't think that's the case.

What I think is happening is men who aren't social in real life, end up playing computer games, because they aren't playing basketball with their friends - as they aren't social.However everyone wants to talk once in a while, and if this non-social male hasn't talked for 20 hours of the day, than those 4 hours of play time turn into a chit-chat "lol/rofl/noob/etc." session.

Now lets break down the women who play video games. Women get a lot of social time whether they want to or not. Other women just start conversations with them (I know my wife does that), men hit on them, etc. The last thing a non-social woman would want to do, is play an MMO where even more contact with people is unavoidable.A social woman may play MMO though for fun, or to slow-down on her social interaction that she had that day. Since she already had been talking to real people and having real conversations, she may not want to chit-chat with the odd-ball men in her guild. I mean if women on the street wouldn't glance at them, than what's the point? right?

Im a girl that plays wow, and I try to avoid telling the world that I'm a girl, just for the simple fact that: a) I do not like favoritism (I can play as good as a guy, I have the same responsabilities, I can schedule raids, etc) and b) Sometimes the guys tend to get REAAAAAALLY annoying with girls... ie, "gimme your msn" "send me a picture" "do you have a boyfriend?" or starts chit-chatting without me answering more than "yes" or "no".

I can completely see why a female (I am one myself) would join the PUG, the females I know play wow for one reason the enjoyment of the game, be it progression through the most recent raid or for lore and content. I certainly dont play for the "friends" I meet in game, as I understand that these are not friends in the female sense but aquaintences to make chit chat with if one wants. The social aspect is incidental to the game itself, I like the multiplayer aspect because its competitive, I like being in a guild because that enables me to compete. Thats it! To women friends are sterotypically people one uses for support, to share emotions with etc etc (as well as the occasional bottle of Barolo) this realistically can not often be found in an online game. I believe men see friendship as, for want of a better word a more superficial bond therefore, of course women are likely to join the PUG they are less likely to be seeking the social in a place which it is not likely to be found.

My experiences are similar to Ephemeron's. Every guild I've belonged to - from purely social guilds to 25-man progression guilds to PvP guilds - had a higher female-to-male ratio than is assumed to be the case for the overall playerbase. I also agree with the first Anon - how do you know the people your girlfriend is chatting with are all women? It sounds like you are making a huge assumption there, for reasons I cannot fathom.

I find it highly amusing that apparently at no point in this process did you ask any of these (assumed to be) women "why did you join my guild?" From the text, one gets the impression you haven't even asked your girlfriend.

I can completely see why a female (I am one myself) would join the PUG, the females I know play wow for one reason the enjoyment of the game, be it progression through the most recent raid or for lore and content. I certainly dont play for the "friends" I meet in game, as I understand that these are not friends in the female sense but aquaintences to make chit chat with if one wants. The social aspect is incidental to the game itself, I like the multiplayer aspect because its competitive, I like being in a guild because that enables me to compete. Thats it! To women friends are sterotypically people one uses for support, to share emotions with etc etc (as well as the occasional bottle of Barolo) this realistically can not often be found in an online game. I believe men see friendship as, for want of a better word a more superficial bond therefore, of course women are likely to join the PUG they are less likely to be seeking the social in a place which it is not likely to be found.

Well, an "asocial" area is the place where most of the fairness is granted. No one ist judged by race, sex or appearance, because it´s simply of no interest. The individual "careing" about other members is often the point, that drives female players away, the ones who don´t shout it out on trade channel for some gold, because they get the feeling of being not able to play on their own."Sharing is Careing" harms the selfconfidence of those player, who are never tanken as full worthy.

I played with a few girls but newer ever saw/hear of someone shouting at a girl or calling her "bitch". It's true serious raiding guilds require members to be 18+. But even teenagers do not attack girls.

So whenever one groups together with others, be it for raiding, whining BGs, whatever, he does something social.

Cooperation to achieve common goals is deeply social.

"Asocial guild" is an oxymoron.

Doing something asocial means withoutanybody else.

Asocial doesen't mean "we will team up to kill the LK very effective while handicapping ouerselfs with bad (=blue) gear" or "we chainwin 1K winter by using better grouptaktiks".

Asocial means soloing the LK or solo-ganking horde in 1K winter.

Wether you are speaking with your teammates about your wifes hemorrhoids in /g is irrelevant.

Maybe my viewpoint is a bit biologistic - ants, termites and bees are the epitome of social animals.Every member of the stock will die without hesitation for the greater good.Not because of some stupid sort of altruism, but because this is the way to pass on his genes (=payment in evolutionary term) way more effective than by fighting all alone.

Bees, termites and ants are a hell of effective.

I know, you use a very different definition of the word social - but I do think in the case of women you are confusing your definition (social=M&S) with the common definition (see above).

Women like going to gay men clubs because there was less threat, less sleaze ( aimed at them) and it was a place to be yourself, and have fun. You weren't chased off the dance floor by a guy wanting you to lick salt off his neck for a tequila shot. Maybe it isn't surprising because as some commentators have already pointed out, the environment is more of a haven/safe place where people who are likely to cause gender based harassment are not tolerated.

That's why I'm sure that globalization will finally kill sociality: socials reject different people, but soon no group will be majority anywhere. Social groups cannot function in such environment, asocials can.

Do you really think that will happen? I too dream of a time when everyone treats everyone else as a human being.

We live in a world were we let a billion people go hungry, that is every seventh human (!) and we don't do anything about it as a race.

Every damn day 25 thousand people die from hunger (that's one every three seconds) and we don't care about, but on the other hand we dig out 33 miners.

There will always be "we" and "them" in the human mind. The only thing that will save us might be an alien invasion requiring us to work together at the risk of extinction.

I think what you've created is an environment where a lot of the stupid behaviors that could potentially make them uncomfortable or angry are forbidden, and the rules are enforced. I think that's great, even if the result wasn't quite what you expected.

I'm finding this an interesting observation and for once, I can say that there's certainly something to your reasoning Gevlon. It doesn't actually surprise so much when you think about it though:

social standards and social bias are something men and women alike suffer from in different ways, especially when not meeting so-called 'social norms'. it seems logical to me that in this respect it can be a big relief to join a community that is free of social standards ingame, for ex. concerning gender stereotypes (that doesn't mean ofc that you do not have other standards of your own). especially if we consider that MMO gamers look for a bit of escapism too.so basically you treat men and women equally in your own, asocial way.

at the same time you do of course have set standards of your own and you do also reject a lot of people surely that do not fit your type of guild. you might not call them 'social' standards but they work in pretty much the same way even if they're aimed at different things.

About 35% of the WoW playerbase is women. Why does it surprise you that about 1/3rd of your guild is female?

Personally, I would rather be in a good social guild than The PUG. I am lucky and particular about who I guild with. However, perhaps some people who are intrinsically social would rather give up the chance for public social connections to avoid having to deal with what they identify as M&S behavior. The Pug provides an atmosphere where people can be social only on their own terms (whispers, vent, private chat channels, etc.)

A very interesting post Gevlon - I think you may be on to something here. Whilst it may be fun to be in a social guild when you are a member of the "in group", it's hell if you're a member of the "out group", particularly if that "out group" is defined by something you have no control over, like gender, sexuality or race.

"Every damn day 25 thousand people die from hunger (that's one every three seconds) and we don't care about, but on the other hand we dig out 33 miners."

That has more to do with the bigger numbers simply becoming stastics whereas the smaller things are easier to 'identify' (wrong word no doubt but I'm drawing a blank other than this) with the smaller problems.

I'm a girl and have been playing WoW since Classic, and have had to put up with my fair share of "lolling" men hitting on me, telling me they'll help if I show them "the girls" if you catch my drift, and various other stupid crap.

It's a damn video game, I'm here to play. If I wanted these UNwanted passes I'd go to the local stupid center (AKA a bar).

As others have said, The PuG provides a "safe haven" for these women. Bit of a by-product perhaps of the rules meant to keep M&S out, but I don't find it all that surprising.

I'm a female and I'd rather join a guild like a pug where "no one cares what someone else thinks about me" than those social guilds where people "care what other think about me" which turns into some peacock parade because they all strive to impress others and "show who's the man".

I strive for a place where everyone just cares about doing their job and not about their place in the pecking order. Because in the second case they think woman is an easy target to assault to win a position at her expense, I mean I'd rather hear "stfu bitch" because the guy thought what I said was genuinely stupid than to hear the same no matter what I say because he wants to win points in his patchiarchal ape tribe.

P.S. I also agree it's really annoying to hear all those "gimme ur msn", "post your pic" when they find out on vent you're a female.

I have to admit I agree with most of your post. But having read your blog for several years, I interpret your term "asocial" differently from the strict definition.

Asocial means NOT social. Avoids contact with others. That's not what you really mean, I don't think. Antisocial or sociopathic would take that to an extreme of being violent against social interactions.

Just like you adopted the word "cool" to explain what drives your "socials", you really should refine what you mean by the word "asocial".